When a man in 19th-century America shot dead his wife’s lover, he was quite likely to be acquitted. As was the photographer Muybridge ...

Eadweard
Flora
Major
A wager
A gunshot

The ambitious project of the SKUTR tandem of stage directors focuses on the story of the world-renowned photographer Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneer in photography and film, the inventor of chronophotography, the electromagnetic shutter timer, the zoopraxiscope ...

Eadweard Muybridge’s creations are generally well-known, yet precious few are familiar with his life story. Laterna magika has a lot in common with his work – motion, photography, film.

The artist and inspired inventor Muybridge hailed from England, yet he went on to gain recognition in the United States. Owing to having invented a fast shutter mechanism, he resolved the question raised by businessmen and race-horse owners, who had made a wager pertaining to whether all four feet of a horse were off the ground at the same time when it was galloping. Muybridge was obsessed with capturing light and mastering time. He succeeded in capturing that which had not been captured previously, and, owing to his experiments with recording motion, he can be deemed the predecessor of film too, although the celluloid tape did not exist in his time. Dedicated to his work, he neglected his young wife, who found comfort in the arms of a lover. The affair ended in high drama - Muybridge shot his rival dead. Yet the court acquitted him on the grounds of “justifiable homicide”.

“The alternative stage project blends acting and contemporary dance, with movement being afforded a great scope in the production. The dancers (five pairs) and actors do not interact, yet their roles are absolutely equipollent, not overshadowing each other. Accordingly, each of the production’s components serves to advance the story, telling its next episode. The show is visually bold, everything in it is organically interconnected – the video projection, the light design, the artful sets and the costumes, inspired by the era in which the story takes place. … The major events in Muybridge’s life unfurl in poetic images, which evoke the respective atmosphere, feelings and intense emotions. Each of the pivotal moments stretches into a longer section. It would seem that the time comes to a standstill, and all that evolves in this timelessness is the characters’ pure and impressive states of mind. Nonetheless, the production never slackens its tempo. Human Locomotion is far from being an ordinary tale of the life of a person, it presents instead an extraordinarily captivating theatre, one abounding in metaphors, imagination and multilayered images.”
(Johana Mücková, ČT24.cz)

“The most compelling facet in the story-telling is Jan Kodet’s choreography. At the very beginning of the production, the audience is engrossed by the dance of pairs at the wedding, in which Kodet applies – as in photography – frozen moments in the poise. By means of a stream of individual scenes – the dancers’ movement from left to right, measurement and putting down of imaginary items – the choreographer creates the abstract space of Muybridge’s studio.”
(Marcela Benoniová, OperaPLUS.cz)

“Intriguing, forcible emotional scenes are conceived by five pairs of dancers amid Jan Kodet’s inspired choreography and in the gracious, albeit modern, costumes designed by Jakub Kopecký. … The New Stage is once again hosting an exquisite production, featuring paramount aesthetics of movement, images and, most markedly, the human body.”
(Marcela Magdová, Metro)

“The dance appears to be an integral part of the visual aspect, delicately underlining the moods and emotions of the lead characters. In plenty of images, Kodet makes use of free imagination and duly unfolds a variety of original choreographic ideas. In the collective scenes in particular, he has brought to bear his talent in work with the movement’s dynamism and stratification, coming across as a magical game of the symphony orchestra.”
(Lucie Burešová, Taneční aktuality.cz)

“The set design plays the key role in the performance, it is perfectionist and elegant. The individual scenes evoke the turmoil of a photography studio, in which tendentious pictures for a lifestyle magazine are made. … The choreography of Jan Kodet adds dynamism, it is inventive, nimble and elaborate; it is a product of true refinement. ... His vocabulary is extensive indeed, teeming with a variety of phrases, and for over half the time his dance arrangements simply float in the air.”
(Nina Vangeli, Divadelní noviny)

“A significant role in Human Locomotion is played by Petr Kaláb’s music, whose tones constitute a splendid background and a material which the choreographer Jan Kodet has recast into absorbing dance performances. … The dancers represent a sort of essence, they are the ideas of the entire story, while the actors impersonate the natures and main features of the individual personages.”
(Milan Kajínek, Velká Epocha.sk)

“Human Locomotion lavishly utilises the plethora of Laterna magika tools in each and every respect: the projection and the lights, the music and the dance. And the production wonderfully knits all of them together; although it came into being led by stage directors, it is the fruit of the close collaboration with the choreographer Jan Kodet, the set designer Jakub Kopecký, the actors and other members of the creative team. (…) Laterna magika has available state-of-the-art technology and it continues to unceasingly seek new and novel ways of astounding the audience, showing to them what the company is able to create (noteworthy is the recently premiered production of Anticodes, employing an interactive typing mega machine). (…) Co-operation with such fine creators as the SKUTR duo gives rise to world-class shows, thus reviving the legend Laterna magika once undoubtedly was.”
(Ondra Dominik Horník, Artikl, 17. 5. 2014)